


Loose and Fly

by redonthefly



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Robin Hood AU, Sherwood Frozen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 11:17:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3766150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redonthefly/pseuds/redonthefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kristoff gets an archery lesson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loose and Fly

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt 'Competency Kinks R Us'

“Look, it’s not hard,” Anna says. She pulls a coiled loop out of one of her belt pouches, and shakes it loose, then fits it over the notched end of the bow with a grunt. “The tension on these is pretty low - it’d be higher on a longbow, but for these recurve things, not so much. You overcompensate and pull back too hard.”

“I know how to shoot,” Kristoff grumbles, but he watches anyway as she twangs the bowstring experimentally .

“Yes, I have seen what you call shooting. Those are the nights we have bread for supper.”

He rolls his eyes good naturedly. “Shut up. Your staff work could use some improvement, you know.”

Anna hums, reaching back into her quiver for an arrow. She pulls one out, quickly checks the fletching, and drops it neatly into place, ready to draw.

“The staff,” she says, pulling back easily on the bowstring, “is for smashing. The bow is for piercing.”

She gets quiet, aiming, and Kristoff unconsciously holds his breath watching her. There is a moment before an archer shoots when the world around them seems to freeze, to disappear - he has seen Anna dissolve into that quiet hundreds of times, even in the midst of frantic activity and chaos, the hair of breath between fixing her target and letting loose the arrow. She stills, maybe a heartbeat, maybe less, the lines of her body fluid and and graceful and strong.

He lets out his breath.

She releases, the arrow flying away high and true over the grass. It’s a calm day, hardly any wind at all, so the only noise is the low undercurrent of birdsong and the soft  _thwap_ of the flax string snapping back into place. Anna squints, holding a hand up over her eyes, and grins. Across the other side of meadow, her arrow bobs gently out of the center of the Wanted poster they are using for target practice.

“And piercing means  _eating_. Something  _meat_ ,” she finishes smugly, and hands him the bow. “Try again.”

“I can hit a tree, Little Red Robin,” he says, pushing it back into her hands. “Trees stand still. That’s easy.” He walks a couple of paces over to the tree line and bends down, scooping up a handful of pine cones.

Anna rolls her eyes, but her expression is fond, and she watches him curiously as he juggles them for a moment, her bow hanging loose in her hands.

Kristoff lunges forward, flinging the pine cones randomly into the air in rapid succession, shouting “Let’s see how you do with... _this_!”

He’s always known she’s good. She’s the best, really, the best he’s ever met - he’s watched her thread an arrow through the slimmest of the palace windows, compensating for the weight of a parchment note tied to the shaft almost without thought, has seen her shave the feathers off noblemen’s caps for the sheer fun of it, and regularly witnesses her string, draw, and shoot weapons that are longer than she is tall.

It’s still a marvelous sight to see. Anna in action is a beautiful as she is in complete sniper’s stillness, and he grins as her eyes go wide and instantly alert, body twisting, arms reaching for the quiver still strapped to her back and the graceful arch of the arrows as she sets them one after another into the sky.

The pine cones drop to earth with gentle plop-plops in the grass, and she turns, laughing and huffing a little, catching her breath while he claps and whoops.

“So we agree you’ll do the shooting then?” He asks as she comes over, shaking her head at him and yanking one arrows out of its target. It showers her tunic with bits of tree.

“ _Fine_. I’ll do the shooting. _If_ you keep teaching me the staff,” she concedes, voice and posture falsely prim as she tries to brush herself off. It’s no use - they’ve been scouting in the woods all day, and she has a bit of the wild about her, wisps of hair coming loose all around her face and neck, cloak lying forgotten in a heap on the ground so her arms are free, dirty linen sleeves rolled up, her skin pink from the sun and scraped everywhere that’s not protected by the scuffed leather of her wrist braces.

He wants to reach out and touch her, to run the weight on her braided hair through his fingers. It’s not until she makes a soft and startled sort of sound that he realizes that he has; one hand unconsciously spanning the middling distance between them, cupping her cheek.

She looks up and he looks down, and they are, for a moment, together in the archer’s still space between heartbeats.

Kristoff leans forward just a little, cautious and drawn, vision filling with the freckles on her cheeks. “The last time I let you play with my staff,” he whispers, watching her eyes get wider, “you smacked yourself right in the face with it and fell in the dirt.”

Anna bursts out laughing, shoves at his chest and turns, all the tension gone, giggling to herself as she heads toward the far target to retrieve the rest of the arrows still embedded in the tree.

The sun is setting now, and there’s a breeze picking up; he shivers and pulls their abandoned cloaks off the ground, slings his pack over one shoulder, and follows. 


End file.
